There are three counties in this prefecture: Shangri-La (formerly Zhongdian), Dêqên County, and Weixi Lisu Autonomous County (formerly Weixi), and they all used to be under the administration of Lijiang (located southeast of this prefecture).[1] This autonomous prefecture was established in 1957 and named Diqing by its first governor.[1] The name of this Tibetan autonomous prefecture (TAP) is also spelled Dechen, Deqing, or Dêqên.[2]

This prefecture is in the southern part of a historical region called Kham, which was part of the Tibetan Empire many centuries ago. After the decline of that empire in the 9th century, peripheral areas like southern Kham remained part of Tibet more in an ethnographical than a political sense. As a practical matter, by the mid-1700s, the Tibetan Government had mostly lost control of Kham to Manchu (Qing) China, and that situation lasted until the end of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912.[3]

During the remainder of the 20th century, the prefecture's capital was called Zhongdian but was renamed on December 17, 2001 as Shangri-La City (other spellings: Semkyi'nyida, Xianggelila, or Xamgyi'nyilha) after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, with an eye toward promoting tourism in the area.

On June 25, 2007 the Pudacuo National Park was established on 500 square miles (1,300 km2) in this prefecture. On January 11, 2014, there was a major fire in the 1,000 year old Dukezong Tibetan neighborhood of the capital city Shangri-La, causing much damage and hardship.[5]

^Goldstein, M.C. "Change, Conflict and Continuity among a community of nomadic pastoralists—A Case Study from western Tibet, 1950-1990" in Resistance and Reform in Tibet (eds. Barnett and Akiner. London: Hurst & Co., 1994).